“From the perspective of the family the position is very
clear: they’re there for the long term,” he said by phone.

The family’s stance may damp recurring speculation that UCB
will be a target. The company says Cimzia for rheumatoid
arthritis and the epilepsy treatment Vimpat will boost sales,
which stalled the past five years as UCB’s previous best-sellers
lost patent protection. The new products, along with treatments
for osteoporosis and lupus that are in the final stage of
studies, are poised to reward investors’ patience, said Chief
Executive Officer Roch Doliveux.

“We’ve gone through difficult times and transforming
times,” Doliveux said in an interview in his office. “We’re in
a phase of enjoying the growth and maximizing that growth. That
has been possible because right in the middle, where we had
significant issues with our patent expiries in 2008, 2009, we
kept on investing in R&D. Without a reference shareholder that
would have been tougher.”

‘Most Attractive’

Cimzia will reach $1 billion in sales next year, according
to the average of four analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg,
while Vimpat will achieve the same milestone by 2016. Those
products, together with the company’s drugs in development,
would “on paper” draw the interest of larger pharmaceutical
companies seeking to solve their own patent woes, said Richard
Parkes, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG in London.

“Of all the European companies it’s one of the ones that
would look most attractive,” Parkes said by phone. Sales of
Cimzia, Vimpat and the Parkinson’s disease drug Neupro, which
UCB calls its core medicines, rose 27 percent to 847 million
euros in the first nine months of the year.

UCB’s assets could make it a target for AstraZeneca Plc,
which is facing declining sales of four of its five biggest-selling drugs, Andrew Baum, an analyst with Citigroup Inc. in
London, wrote in a report last week.

UCB rose 0.4 percent to close at 49.70 euros in Brussels.
The stock, which peaked in 2006 at 54.85 euros, has returned 18
percent this year, including reinvested dividends, compared with
a 27 percent return for the Bloomberg Europe Pharmaceuticals
Index. Among 24 analysts tracked by Bloomberg, nine recommend
buying the shares, 10 have a hold rating, and five suggest
investors sell.

Pfizer Competition

Investors have fretted over slower-than-expected Cimzia
revenue after third-quarter sales of the drug missed analysts’
estimates, said Fabian Wenner, an analyst with Kepler Cheuvreux
in Zurich who has a reduce rating on the stock. The injection is
also facing competition from new oral therapies such as Pfizer
Inc.’s Xeljanz.

Cimzia belongs to a class of drugs called TNF-alpha
inhibitors that also includes AbbVie Inc.’s Humira, with sales
of $9.3 billion last year, and Enbrel, sold by Pfizer and Amgen
Inc., who shared sales of $7.9 billion last year. UCB’s share of
the anti-TNF market has been stuck at about 5 percent for the
past two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg
Industries.

Mature Products

At the same time, sales of the company’s older products are
declining. UCB’s so-called mature products dropped 17 percent in
the first half of the year to 929 million euros.

Still, expanded regulatory approvals of Cimzia as a
treatment for the inflammatory illnesses ankylosing spondylitis
and psoriatic arthritis, will help the company achieve its goal
of peak sales for the drug of “at least” 1.5 billion euros by
the second half of the decade, according to Doliveux.

“There should really be no concern,” Doliveux said. “I’m
very confident about Cimzia. The momentum is there, it’s very
strong in the U.S. and in Europe. Soon it will be a question of
what does the ‘at least’ mean.”

Emmanuel Janssen founded the company, a maker of industrial
chemicals then known as Union Chimique Belge, in 1928. Four
family representatives -- Charles-Antoine Janssen, Evelyn du
Monceau, Arnoud de Pret and Bridget van Rijckevorsel -- hold
seats on the 12-member board.

UCB is collaborating with Amgen on the development of
romosozumab for the treatment of post-menopausal osteoporosis, a
disease that afflicts 65 million people in the U.S., Japan and
Europe, with a market estimated by UCB at $6.6 billion annually.
The two companies expect data by the end of 2015 from the final
stage of trials usually needed for regulatory approval.

Lupus Drug

The drug could be “transforming” for UCB because of the
potential market size, Doliveux said.

UCB also expects results in early 2015 from a late-stage
trial of epratuzumab, a treatment for lupus that UCB licensed
from Immunomedics Inc. in 2006. That drug is high risk because
the outcomes of the trial aren’t easily measured, he said.

Doliveux, a veterinarian by training, joined UCB as head of
its pharmaceutical business in 2003 and became CEO in 2005. He
oversaw the company’s transition into a specialty-drug company
after the 1.5 billion-pound ($2.4 billion) purchase of Celltech
Group Plc in 2004 and the 4.4 billion-euro acquisition of
Schwarz Pharma AG in 2006.

While Doliveux says the company always looks for new deals,
the pace of dealmaking has slowed since then.

“The hurdle is very high because of the growth rates that
are ahead of us, and because of the shareholder value creation
that is ahead of us,” Doliveux said. “It’s very difficult to
beat that. Goal No. 1 in medicine is do no harm. I guess Goal
No. 1 in M&A is do no harm.”